Children’s Everyday Skills Grew Slower Than Usual During COVID-19 Pandemic: Study

Executive function grew at lower levels than normal, researchers found.

Students walk to their classrooms at a middle school in Los Angeles on Sept. 10, 2021. Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

Children’s everyday skills such as keeping track of relevant information grew slower than normal during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a newly published paper.

Researchers with the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health analyzed the executive function skills of 3,107 children in Massachusetts from 2018 to 2023. Executive function covers a variety of skills, including retaining information and keeping track of relevant information across multiple tasks. It usually grows sharply during early childhood.

The researchers analyzed the skills through a test called the Minnesota Executive Function Scale, which involves children sorting cards and undertaking other tasks. The test has a 100-point scale.

The analysis of 3- to 11-year-old children showed that scores progressed or only slightly dropped before the COVID-19 pandemic started, in March 2020. After that, researchers recorded a 0.5 standard deviation drop and a subsequent decrease in the following years. The scores leveled off in the middle of 2023, when the children were 10 and 11.

Before the pandemic, an average 8-year-old would score 100 points or slightly higher. After the pandemic began, that estimate became 94 points, Stephanie Jones, the Gerald S. Lesser professor in early childhood development at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and coauthors said in the study, which was published on March 24 by Child Development.

“Our findings overall substantiate the limited amount of research on this topic that documents [executive function] declines for young children over the pandemic period,” they wrote, including a 2025 paper that covered data from preschoolers in Denver.

A more recent study, from researchers in the United Kingdom, showed that some children’s executive functioning progressed slower during the pandemic, which they said may reflect the importance of socialization, given the lockdowns imposed amid COVID-19.

In an interview released by the Society for Research in Child Development, which publishes the journal Child Development, the authors of the new study said that they were surprised by the magnitude of their findings.

“Our study calls for further investigation into the role of executive function as an explanatory mechanism driving challenges to children’s academic and behavioral struggles post-pandemic,” they said. “We plan to continue to explore the mechanisms driving our findings in our upcoming work.”

Funding for the research came from the Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation, a nonprofit that says it backs efforts that help homeless people, advance education, improve graduation rates, and provides benefits such as medical care to needy people.

Limitations include the children who were tested all living in Massachusetts, which may not be representative of other parts of the country.

Authors declared no conflicts of interest.